Image is a summary of states’ attitudes on gay rights issues from a paper recently published in the American Political Science Review
- Maine residents will decide Tuesday whether to repeal a law allowing same-sex marriage, an effort that has succeeded in every state where it has been put before voters.
- Defenders and haters alike have descended on the state, where it seems the fight is neck and neck.
- The gay-marriage supporters want The National Organization for Marriage (the group which has supplied more than half of the 2.6 million raised for the repeal effort in Maine, and which succeeded in overturning California’s same-sex ruling last year) to disclose its donors.
- A group of good Catholics held a vigil outside the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception Sunday morning in support of Maine’s same-sex marriage law.
- Even Arlen Specter says it’s time to repeal DOMA.
- Here’s a cool chart (above) showing how legal and policy responses to gay rights issues lag behind much more liberal popular opinion.
- Around 200 ministers, representing nearly every faith, have formed D.C. Clergy United for Marriage Equality.
- Referendum 71, a proposal to extend more legal protections to domestic partners in Washington State, has been nicknamed “everything but marriage” — but poo-poo-ers say it IS marriage.
- The Obama administration argued in court Friday that the federal government is not obligated to extend benefits to same-sex couples in states where their marriages are considered legal (i.e. Massachusetts), because they (the federal government) are obligated to defend laws enacted by Congress while they are on the books (even though those laws are discriminatory). Did you get that?
- The Argentine Congress is considering legalizing same-sex marriage, which would make Argentina the first Latin American country to do so.
